Cthulhu Saves the World

[kitten]

So, I've been busy with a few things and haven't been able to play this much yet - I'm certainly going to dig in once I've chipped some of backlog I've accumulated recently away - but I felt like starting a thread on it, anyway.

Anyone else picked this up? It's the spiritual sequel to Breath of Death VII and plays a lot like it.

[roushimsx]

I loved it to bits. The writing was better than Breath of Death VII, they improved the general difficulty balance throughout the adventure (with only one real sticking point midway through), it's a good bit longer, and the new option to save at any time is a godsend. Fantastic game that I loved to bits. My only real complaint for it was that the inventory system was pretty poorly done, but it's thankfully not a huge hindrance to enjoying the game.

Looks like it sold a little over 2600 copies in the first three days of release, which isn't bad at all for a game on the indie channel and especially nice for a game selling at the $3 price point.

Epic Dungeon is still moving copies pretty well (looks like he's about to hit 12k copies sold), too. I'm not much of a roguelike fan, but holy hell is the game fun as all get out.

It's a shame Hypership Out of Control doesn't look like it's going to hit even 300 copies. That game is kind of fun

After finishing up Cthulhu Saves the World, I finally got around to playing Aphelion Ep 1. It's not bad, but it's a bit...generic, I guess. The art style helps carry it, but it's a bit like playing a generic sci-fi 32-bit RPG...which is ok with me, since I'm totally down for some sci fi RPG goodness. There's some nagging bugs that never got fixed (like how the text in the buy/sell screen overwrites all of the stuff on the bottom of the screen if you have too much stuff in your inventory), but I'm hoping they're gone in the second episode. We'll see.

Oh, and the general dialog in Aphelion is pretty terrible; about on par with trashy dialog from games like Final Fantasy VII. I'm hoping it's better in the sequel, but I'm not holding my breath. The crappy dialog is especially noticeable after playing something as humorous and interesting as CStW.

[kitten]

Glad to hear that it's generally better - I really enjoyed Breath of Death, and all I really wanted out of a (spiritual or otherwise) sequel was it to be almost the same, but a bit better.

Epic Dungeon is pretty good, too, but it's too easy and it gets really repetitive, even for a roguelike. I beat it on my second try without much effort. Given that you could essentially grind your way through things and buy things from a shop, it was too forgiving and didn't have enough variety. I really did enjoy it, I just felt it could have been better.

Since you seem to be in on the Indie Games channel, too, have you heard if Arkedo is cooking anything else up?

[roushimsx]

Jan 4, 2011 19:51:23 GMT -5 kitten said:

Since you seem to be in on the Indie Games channel, too, have you heard if Arkedo is cooking anything else up?

Last I heard, Arkedo bailed on the indie channel and is going to XBLA instead (low sales / poor performance of their games despite widespread critical acclaim). I'm no angel...I still haven't even downloaded the trial for Jump, but damn did I love Pixel.

Indie tangent -> Did you ever play the original SoulCaster? I haven't given the sequel a shot yet, but I hear it's more of the same w/ more enjoyable levels and more content. Just the thought of that makes me warm and fuzzy, because I really loved the first game.

edit - oh man, looks like Arkedo is doing XBLA and PSN both. Hell yea. Hope it works out well for them.

[kitten]

Oh, wow, really? Man, I hope things go well for Arkedo. All three of the Arkedo series games on XBLIG were really fun, especially Pixel. If they added a little more content, I'd easily be willing to plunk $10 or $15 on games of their caliber. I downloaded each of the Arkedo games as they came out, and have been waiting for a successor to their last one for what seems like forever.

And, no, SoulCaster is one of the few highly rated XBLIG's that I didn't really have much interest in. It looked kinda like Gauntlet, which I was never that big a fan of. I've considered giving it a shot, but I've got so much on my plate right now that on the off chance that it's interesting, I don't need ANOTHER game to distract me.

[roushimsx]

It's like Gauntlet mixed with Tower Defense, sort of. In the early tutorial levels you pick up the different heroes one by one and learn to use them in a few levels between new character acquisitions. You can't do anything on your own, but you can deploy a hero to stand there and attack and you need to strategically place (and frequently recall and redeploy) them to take care of the enemies and make it out of the level. It's surprisingly addictive and fun. (trailer)

Protect Me Knight is a bit like that as well, though take away the Gauntlet reference and put Rampart in there instead along with a healthy dose of hack and slash. It's pretty rad.

On topic, the official trailer for Cthulhu Saves the World is fucking gold.


for anyone on the fence about spending $3 on a widely critically acclaimed RPG, please watch that video. WATCH IT. How can you say no to that?

[kitten]

I'm familiar with Protect Me Knight and tried it out - I enjoyed the music (apparently done by Yuzo Koshiro, wtf) and graphical style, but I just don't like tower defense games. Looks like I'll be passing on Soulcaster, too.

Also, that song is so awesome

[thethird]

that trailer is fucking tempting me.

it's tempting me so hard.

[kitten]

it's $3 man just get it

also get BoD if you don't have it, it's only $1

[Atma]

If they somehow got this on PSN I would gladly give them $5 per game for these. These look absolutely charming and like they would fit right in with my sense of humor.

[A Winner Is You]

Wow, this looks great. I have some MS points sitting around doing nothing and *just* enough HD space. Soon as I can connect my Xbox 360 to the Net again I'm grabbing it.

[kitten]

^ Keep in mind that you can only play Xbox Live Indie Games while connected to the internet. The second you lose connection, you're not allowed to play them. As much as I want other people to buy more indie games, they really need to know this, first (and it's not at all made obvious).

[A Winner Is You]

That's a shame. Guess I *won't* be downloading it. But now that you mention it, I do remember not being able to play some demos I downloaded way back when the indie games channel first launched as 'Community Games'. I thought it strange at the time but figured it only applied to the demo versions.

Anyway, thanks for the heads-up.

[roushimsx]

Jan 4, 2011 21:34:59 GMT -5 Atma said:

If they somehow got this on PSN I would gladly give them $5 per game for these. These look absolutely charming and like they would fit right in with my sense of humor.

The lead designer has mentioned in the past (and recently on his Twitter!) that a PC port was highly likely (in part because of the people that heard about Breath of Death VII but couldn't try it because they didn't have a 360). He's spending the next month or so working on a short little project of his own (a short 1-2hr RPG called "Brains vs. Braaains!") and then he's planning on rolling right into working on the PC port of Cthulhu Saves the World.

Highly doubtful that we'll ever see the stuff on PSN, but a PC port is still pretty awesome and I'm totally down for buying it again to throw some support their way.

Also, numbers from yesterday are in and the game moved another 571 copies!

[Atma]

A PC port would be equally as welcome by me! This is good news.